University of Virginia Library

Don't Just Stand There:
The Miami Presbytery Responds

During the postwar expansion period, the Miami Presbytery, following national denominational strategy, had concentrated on new church development in the suburbs. Many of the new congregations established during the early 1960s, however, were running into hard times. A new congregation was allowed five years to develop its membership base before being asked to

shoulder complete responsibilities for the cost of its building and ministry. Not uncommonly, however, these congregations were not growing rapidly enough in five years to handle their financial obligations alone and were thus so engrossed in the task of survival that they lost perspective on their missions.

By 1967, the issue of expansion and development had led the Miami Presbytery to seek new directions in the establishment of congregations. When the local National Missions Committee considered the proposal in the national strategy document, they responded positively. Many of the dilemmas of support and survival for a new congregation could be circumvented by the simple scheme of bringing people together around social problems, investing minimally in property and possessions, and relying on mutual goals and activities to sustain congregational life and spirit. The mood of the moment pointed unwaveringly to the racial crisis as a rallying, issue for Christian involvement.

Following the guidelines and recommendations of the Board of National Missions, the Miami Presbytery's National Missions Committee devised a plan for an experimental congregation and urged the Presbytery to support the temporary establishment of such a mission "with a like commitment to strive for racial reconciliation both within the Church and within society." [16]

The strategists developing the design for the new congregation assumed that those members of established congregations oriented toward social action could find few; opportunities for action programs within the existing churches. They were likely to have neither the support group nor the freedom of action required to sustain long-term commitment to such missions. An issue-oriented congregation, however, could provide both. The planners also assumed that the right congregational design would attract a sufficient number of action-oriented lay persons from existing churches to create a viable support group. From the more than 10,000 communicants in the Dayton churches, certainly the recruitment of a Gideon's army of two or three dozen would present no problem. One of the strategy goals, therefore, was to develop a congregation attractive to social activists, thereby encouraging and endorsing a program for substantial impact upon the city and its racial crisis.

The committee also incorporated a second goal of the national strategy paper into their proposal. They stressed a need for the

interdependence of the new congregation with the established church for two basic reasons. First, by this means a certain amount of financial support must be forthcoming from the Presbytery. Second, and more important, other churches within the Presbytery would thus be forced to face the implications of the maverick congregation. Connected closely, as a brother congregation, the inevitable tension would need to be confronted and reckoned with by the established congregations. The founding of a congregation specifically to deal with the Christian faith in direct relation to social issues expressed the Presbytery's commitment to this as an important objective. Further, it was assumed that such a congregation would take unpopular stands and become embroiled in controversy, thus challenging the other churches within the Presbytery to consider the social problems raised. Being under the Presbytery's auspices, the new congregation would be a thorn which could not be ignored.

The documents developed in February and March of 1968 by the National Missions Committee of the Miami Presbytery reflected their focal goals. If the church were to take a role in healing the wounds of social injustice and in restructuring the system for the benefit of all men, those church members interested in social change needed the structural freedom necessary to be effective, "for at present there are few places in the church where those who recognize the need for such adjustments have the necessary influence to bring them about." Further, they underscored the theme of interdependence and unity in mission by commissioning the congregation to "explore ways of involving other congregations in social action and, as far as possible, establish cooperative action programs with them." [17]

As the proposal of the National Missions Committee began to travel the conversation route within the Presbytery, significant opposition arose. The fire, however, came not from conservative clergy and lay leaders but rather from younger and more liberal clergy who immediately recognized the potential siphoning off of the few kindred spirits in their congregations. In retrospect, this normal response should have been anticipated. The threat of losing those few lay persons who supported a ministry of social witness, and thereby managed the Herculean task of maintaining the precarious symbolic universes of their clergy, rallied the more

liberal ministers to defend their position. Without these lay persons to support them on the battle fronts of their own congregational ground, even mild attempts to introduce social concerns would lose legitimacy and plausibility. To surrender their soldiers would be tantamount to losing the war of Christian relevancy. And certainly no congregation even approached having an abundance of action-oriented laity.

In a direct maneuver to counter the opposition from liberal clergy, a second document of the National Missions Committee, dated April 16, 1968, elevated the language of cooperation. As envisioned, the new mission would "provide for the Presbytery and established congregations a `training ground' for members of committees and congregations to learn the methods of direct social action, or to explore the possibilities of supportive ministries in the racial crisis." [18] The final description of the proposed congregation even further escalated the significance of service goals. The Congregation for Reconciliation would "develop a group of skilled communicators, educators, technicians, and planners for use by local churches, Presbytery, ecumenical, or secular organizations" [19] (italics added). Conceived as a temporary experiment with a life expectancy of three or four years, the new congregation would have an absolute commitment to a nonbuilding program. Presumably this would leave members, unencumbered by the strong financial pressures of building debts, freer to move in and out, back to their `home' churches. In addition, "the Presbytery [would] encourage the sessions of established congregations to recruit members with careful attention to the fact that they should plan to relate back to the congregation from which they came if at all possible." [20]

By carefully structuring the proposal, the National Missions Committee tried to avert the possibility of their plan passing in the Presbytery but receiving no cooperation from the liberal clergy or their sympathetic laity. This, they realized, would be most unfair to the organizing pastor, and therefore they presented a palatable package to assure a favorable vote and support afterward.

On April 16, 1968, they got the favorable vote, but not only because of their straining so hard to win approval. The larger world also encroached on the Presbytery and pricked consciences.

Martin Luther King, Jr., had been killed; the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Report) had been issued. Racism was the headline of the day. As one supporter of the proposal put it, "In this context, we could have gotten anything approved. There was so much guilt in the churches, so much feeling that we had to do something."

This desperate sense of the need to act, to do something, may have provided the final push needed to give birth to the Congregation for Reconciliation. But as we shall see, this mood resulted in creating an experimental group without clearly coming to grips with what this meant. The several working papers left much ambiguity as to the goals and expectations for the new church. This ambiguity would provide the organizing pastor and his people the flexibility to "do their thing." It would also prove a source of conflict as the Congregation moved in directions that some did not anticipate, nor think they had approved, when they voted to create the experimental group.